Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Here's a real quick and dirty version of a method I used recently for a gravel pile. It turned out better than I had expected, but you'll have to excuse the grass. As I said, quick and dirty. If I were going to do this for a full on project, I would use an L-System instead of the tube and stamp the seed value for it so each branch was different. Also, a better shader than the default wood would definitely be in order. But considering I put this together in about 15 mins, I'm kinda proud of it.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Oh, never really been involved with a challenge. Honestly I thought it was just a clever title to draw attention to his post. I have a the forum setup in an RSS feed and it doesn't discriminate based on sub forum or tell me which forum they come from, so I just kinda respond to whatever I feel I can be helpful on. I guess I should be more wary of which forum I am posting in.

Are there any other etiquette or protocol things I should know about for a challenge? He didn't really give any information in the post about a true "challenge", and it looks like he was asking for advice due to the lack of a deadline or any real parameters for it, so I am a little confused here. Thanks for the heads up Peter.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Okay, so I'll fill in the idea for this challenge a bit and see if anyone bites.

This should be developed as a production asset.

The Director is obsessed with woodpiles, perhaps because this is where his dad got his source of branches used to discipline his son; but really it's quite appropriate because the woodpile is central to this movie's story.

The movie is about a chipmunk that lives in the woodpile and the trials of coping with a home that is changing all the time. The pile is built up and taken down each year as the wood is gathered and burned.

Really though the story is allegorical, representing the hardships that go with the insecurity of our modern times; where careers are changed often and "home" is not the stable, long-term place we used to know.

So, the woodpile needs to be directable. You'll notice the reference images show several types of wood in the piles, particularly the main pile which has maple, beech, hemlock and pine in it.

The director will want to control the percentages of each wood; plus have control over the diameter of the wood. Perhaps a small, medium and large diameter control that can be controlled as to percentage of each, and a switch to turn each off is needed.

There needs to also be small twigs.

While the main pile will be static the twigs need to react to the environment ie: the wind.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I don't know about all of that but to just create a nicely sorted pile of tubes that don't interpenetrate, you can jam them all together then use the Rigid Body Solver. Using RBD as the default, set the Resolve Penetrations to the number of tubes. On frame 2, all the tubes should not be interpenetrating.